


you taught me

by jonsaremembers



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AAAAAAAAAAANGST, canon verse (but believe me I'm not happy about it), just feelings, like i'm kind of sorry about the ending especially?, no plot really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-06 23:04:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19072492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonsaremembers/pseuds/jonsaremembers
Summary: Sansa reflects.





	you taught me

i. love

He is odd and silent, this brother of hers. He never wastes a word. He is perhaps more uncouth now than when they were children; his years among the free folk and the men of the Watch have worn down his castle-raised manners. But, she finds, she does not care as much as she might have once. There are more important things.

Still it seems all improbable, all a dream - that she should be safe, and with the one brother she gave only a stray thought to in the years since they left home. Certainly, any minute now she will wake once again in some tower prison or other, this brief time with Jon only a wispy vision of her fearful brain, vanishing into the night.

But she looks at him and he is here, his big brown eyes pensive as he tears into a tough chunk of bread. The movement of his jaw as he chews is real, is right in front of her. Her heart constricts, as it has often done before, but not with fear. Not this time.

Hope, perhaps. Or perhaps something entirely new.

ii. patience

Ordinarily, Sansa is all but immune to the chill breezes of the North, but today she shivers. Beside her Bran’s face remains impassive. Though he confuses her to no end, she rather envies his seeming ability to rise above feelings. It would be much simpler.

Her knees are complaining when the caravan finally rides into the courtyard, Jon at their head beside a silver-haired woman who can only be the Dragon Queen. Sansa’s heart gives the confusing little leap and squeeze she associates with Jon. It has been so long, it startles her.

Jon halts his horse and swings down, and before Sansa can speak he is at her side, wrapping Bran up in his big arms. “Look at you!” she hears Jon murmur, voice thick. “You’re a man grown.”

“Almost,” Bran says in that clear, blank way of his, and although it is an innocent enough reply, Sansa dreads the double-edged sword its meaning must be. Jon frowns just slightly, and oh, Sansa knows that frown, that little scrunch between his eyebrows, the question that will surely arise later. She knows it as she knows the halls of her home, the stars in the sky.

At last, at long last, he turns, and she opens her arms to him. _I waited for you_ , she wants to say. _Look, haven’t I done well? Haven’t I done what you needed me to, when you left the North in my hands?_ She almost daren’t think, _and have you done what I needed you to do?_

He jostles her as he embraces her, and over his shoulder she can see the pale queen and her guard. But no time for that now. Jon is home, and she has waited so long.

iii. pain

She has been strong for so long.

She has worn her armor and remembered her courtesies and thought of her father and mother and brothers, and she has risen up again and again. She stabbed an undead monster, for gods’ sake.

And yet this - this is breaking her.

Perhaps because she had finally learned to fight, rather than to survive, this particular defeat stings so. She knows Jon would never blame her, even if she had utterly failed to defend him at all. He is good-hearted that way. He doesn’t deserve a life in exile, she thinks, and then her tears are near to bursting her carefully constructed dam. She dives into his furred shoulder to hide her face, like a child seeking comfort.

He drags her tight into him, suddenly, almost like a slap on the back, and vividly into her mind come the memories of that winter day, her frozen dress and threadbare cloak, his wide eyes and incredulous, open mouth, the snow in her hair, his hand on her back, and she feels his shuddering breath in now as she did then, and as before everything else has melted away, just for a moment.

But of course it cannot last, and her heart wrenches towards him as she makes herself step back. She watches him kneel to Bran and make his way down the dock to sail north, alone. Yes, her heart is indeed breaking, and she feels the last of her hope leave her.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this gifset
> 
> https://liviablackthorn.tumblr.com/post/185320558201
> 
> and obviously by the Ariana Grande lyric.


End file.
